Potter's Field
by Hairball
Summary: A potter's field is a term for a place for the burial of the unknown. Albus Potter wishes that he will be someone that is wellknown before he dies, just like his dad. Unfortunately, his wish will never become true. Before his first year at Hogwarts begins, he is told that he is sick. There is no cure.


CHAPTER ONE

His hands had almost lost their feeling from his almost spasmodic grip around the fabric of his trousers. His eyes darted from side to side, looking at his brother and then out through the window, out through the compartment door, to his brother's laughing friends and then back to his hands before the cycle started over. His heart beat hard and fast, so fast he thought he would have a heart attack if it started beating even faster, and half wondered if his brother would see him then, would notice him collapsing. His green eyes stopped straying and settled on James, hearing him joking about things, waiting to be noticed. Nothing. Nothing happened. The other continued just as before, and Albus shrunk even more in the corner of the compartment. He hoped Rose would return soon, with news on having found a compartment of their own. He wished he could have gone with her, but...

"Al, you alright?" James' voice was low, and he was leaning forward so that his friends wouldn't hear and take notice. Albus looked up for a split second, into his brother's brown worried eyes, before turning his gaze down again.

"Yes," he whispered back. His grip tightened even more.

It was like a kind of cancer, the healer had told them, her grey eyes tired and sad and staring at him. A cancer, that only appeared among magic users, that appeared in the victim's magical core and then spread through his or her body, attacking his or hers vital organs. There was nothing they could do. Albus had just stared back at her, news not really reaching him, while his mother had broken completely down in the chair beside him, while his father tried to comfort his wife while failing to fight back tears. It had felt like all that was happening happened miles, galaxies away from him. It didn't get through his skin.

He didn't cry in that office. He didn't cry when his parents told Lily and James, or when his brother left the room crying and screaming that it wasn't fair, or when Rose just curled up on the sofa and shook with quiet sobs. His family's tears didn't get through to him, because it all just felt like a dream. A strange dream, or perhaps an odd film. All the tragedy happened on the other side of a thick glass panel.

Eventually, he cried. All alone in his room the very same night, under his duvet with his hands pressed tightly against his mouth so that a sound wouldn't escape. The next morning, he entered the kitchen smiling at his family, even though no one could bare to smile wholeheartedly back.

His mother hadn't wanted him to go to Hogwarts, nor had his father. They wanted to be with him, help him as much as they could. Albus had had to fight and argue with them for over a month before they decided to let him go. There was conditions however: Weekly check ups with his St. Mungo's healer, whom had agreed to floo over to Hogwarts for that, and to not over-exert himself.

On the morning of the first of September, Albus had woken up feeling sicker than he had ever felt in his whole life. Pushing his mother out of the way, he had ran into his bathroom and thrown up the small amount of dinner he had been able to eat the day before as well as bile. She had almost not let him out of the house after that, and neither had his father. It had ended with Albus crying for the first time in front of them, while yelling at them to let him go, because if he stayed home he would drive himself into insanity. The drive to the station had been quiet, both mother and child with tears running down their cheeks. James had tried to lighten up the atmosphere, but it had backfired. He had started teasing Albus that maybe, just maybe, he would end up in Slytherin, and then proceeded to tell terrible things about the house to Albus. In the end, Albus had felt even worse, and his father had had to put a stop to the whole thing, even reassuring him that Slytherin wasn't that bad, that one of Albus' names, Severus, came from one of the greatests men he had ever known. Intrigued, he had hoped his dad would tell more, but that didn't happen.

And now, he sat there. In the corner of a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, feeling nervous and sick, waiting for his cousin to come back so he could escape from this suffocating place. He really prefered Rose's company over James' right now; even though she knew, she didn't treat him like he would break nor did she look at him with pained eyes. She continued being Rose, his cousin. He loved her dearly for that.

At that moment, the door slid open and a head of red bushy hair looked in.

"I'm back!" Rose said, a small hand placing a strand of hair behind her ear. Smiling at her, Albus carefully stood up. Waving a little to his brother, he left the compartment with his cousin.

"I found an almost empty one in the middle of the train. And, well... ehum..." Rose started to fidget, chewing on her lip. Albus stared at her in wonder.

"The other one in there is that Malfoy boy dad wants me to compete with. I asked him if we could sit with him, and I was so sure he was going to say no, but then he said yes so..." The words all came out very quick, and Albus had a hard time hearing them all. When he had managed to pierce the statement together, he nodded.

"Maybe he isn't that bad, you know?" He looked up at her, seeing her was that he wasn't so sure about his own words, and he knew that neither were she. After all, Rose's father and Albus' uncle had told them both about how horrible and disgusting the Malfoys were.

They arrived at the compartment. Rose stopped for several seconds, and Albus almost asked what she was doing before he noticed the look in her eyes. Fascination. Excitement. This was a puzzle to Rose, something new and exciting that needed to be assembled. Albus couldn't help but to let out a snort, which earned him a glare from the girl before she finally slid the door open. Albus peered inside. The compartment was empty except for a blonde boy, just like Rose had said. Scorpius Malfoy looked back at Albus with grey eyes. Albus had thought he would be met with malice and disgust, but there were none on that in Scorpius' eyes. Instead, there was curiosity which was badly masked with indifference. Scorpius was a thin but rather tall boy, dressed in clothes that looked expensive.

"Hello," Scorpius said, voice steady and confident in itself. "I know who you are, both of you. My father have told me that I should stay away from you, but I feel that it is up to me who I will stay away from or not." Rose opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but closed it and smiled instead. She practically jumped inside the compartment and down on a seat. Albus followed, unsure of what to say. This whole thing was quite strange to him. He had expected that Malfoy would just ignore them the whole trip. But instead, he actually seemed to be interested in them, and even acted against his father's instructions. Albus looked carefully at the boy. Grey eyes stared back, seemingly analyzing. Albus felt how he curled inwards, trying to make himself smaller in order to escape the gaze. Malfoy seemed to understand that he made Albus uncomfortable, because a second later he turned to Rose.

"My father said that if I speak to you, he will cut off my allowance. Not that it will matter; if I need money I will just have to ask mother. Have your parents done something similar? From the look your father gave me on the platform, I have a feeling he will have said something," he asked her. Rose snorted.

"He told me that I should beat you in every test,"she answered. Malfoy's eyebrows rose.

"Sounds like a challenge I have to accept." Rose beamed. Albus sat back and listened to them chatter about school and classes. He felt immensely tired, and it wasn't even noon. The trains soft moves and the voices from his two peers made his eyelids feel heavy, and he had a hard time staying awake. Soon, he fell into some kind of half sleep; he heard the two others continue talking, and felt the moving train but he didn't feel like he was part of that world. It was comforting. It felt like that world was a dream, and now when he was in this other world he felt much better. Not tired, not nervous, not ill, not… sick. Everything was fine in this world of sleep. He wanted to stay, so badly, here where everything was well…

"You okay?" The voice was unfamiliar. Albus opened his eyes slowly. There were something wet on his cheeks. A blue handkerchief appeared in front of him. Albus stared at it, before he looked up at the owner of handkerchief. Malfoy looked back down. Slowly, Albus took it. His moves felt heavy and hard to control, but eventually he managed to wipe the tears from his cheeks away. Albus felt how his face heated up. He must look so childish in front of Malfoy, who probably thought he was crying because he was on the train away from mommy and daddy. He didn't even know why he had cried in his sleep, but he bet that Malfoy was making fun of him in his thoughts.

Malfoy leaned back in his seat and looked out through the window. Albus noticed now that it had begun to get dark; they must be getting close to Hogwarts.

"Your cousin is away talking to your brother. She suggested that we change our clothes," the other boy simply said. He sounded bored. Albus just stared at him for a few seconds,

"Y-yeah, let's change…"


End file.
